Breaking Bad: "Over"Review

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Walt finds his real reason for getting into meth.

By Seth Amitin

The pink bear returned, leaving yet another ominous message of what the season finale may contain. Who is in those bodybags is anybody's guess, though they seem to want us to think it's Walt. On the other hand, the hazmat suits are similar to the one Walt and Pinkman were wearing while cooking. Just informative enough to give us an idea; just ambiguous enough to not show enough. A very thin line.

Breaking Bad continued walking that tight rope while juggling the story arcs, as it has for most of the season, by bringing back a couple of themes touched on earlier. "Over" covered a few topics, but it covered a lot of ground by creating a metaphorical chemical reaction. Walt was unhappy that Walt Jr. didn't see him as tough, so he started doing some home repair and when that didn't work, he found the respect he was looking for in a stand-off with some guys at the hardware store.

I'm not fond of eliminating cancer from the equation (that's certainly not the last we'll hear about the cancer, but 80% tumor loss is dramatic enough to keep cancer off our minds for maybe a full season). However, now we're cutting into the marrow of what drives Walt. He has enjoyed the deep pleasures of doing something wrong because it felt so right and now he's finding he gets the respect he deserves, the money he needs and the work he's always wanted to do through meth. What more could he ask for? I bashed the show last week for giving Walt and family such great news about the cancer—the cancer was the one, unstoppable force in the show and it has since been exposed as a minor threat—but now we're seeing Walt and what he really wants from life. Although it still feels wrong to surgically remove the cancer like that, it seems that Walt has transmogrified into the wild beast that raged within him.

His anger issues got the best of him in this one. The mounting tension between Hank and Walt over Walt Jr. finally erupted in a very, very awkward scene at the pool during a party. It obviously wasn't about the tequila. I wonder why no one else seemed to catch onto that or even ask Walt what he was really picking a fight with Hank over, though Hank is dumb enough to believe his wife's foibles are just her flaws rather than a deep-seated need for attention. Obliviousness seems to be a running theme for everyone except Skyler.

It's great that Walt has found this inner strength he lacked for years, but now he's struggling so hard with contentment and wanting to be seen as tough. The catalyst for the eruption was Walt Jr. being impressed, as usual, with Hank's stories in the war on drugs. Although he loves to share these stories of disembodied heads on tortoises loaded with C4, he's hardly able to deal with the impact of it when he's alone. Nothing is solved by the end of it, I don't think Walt even apologized to Hank afterwards, so there's more to look forward to.

There were a few particularly great scenes in this episode, the stand-off in the hardware store parking lot; the stand-off at the pool; Walt's DIY water cooler project, complete with coming to the breakfast table in the hazmat suit. Some shows could pull off some of the greatest scenes in Breaking Bad, like the explosion in Tuco's building and the shootouts and the Tortoise-head explosion, but very few shows could pull off making the spaces in between those scenes just as interesting. Walt's little apology to Walt Jr. was funny in its own right, but deep on a serious level as well and just as loaded as both stand-offs. Skyler's decision to go back to work was already a conscious decision on her part to avoid Walt and now she's looking for consolation in another man—gossip-worthy stuff, here.

It seems Skyler didn't go back to work just to go back to work and is trying her best to draw the attention of her boss, Ted Beneke. This has been a long time coming, ever since Walt decided not to clue her into his world. Skyler is turning to Ted to fill the void that Walt created and it's sad, but I'm in denial about it. Could she really leave Walt? She's a strong woman, but story-wise, it'd suck too much. What's the end resolution here?

Each part of this episode elevated a theme, made things worse (or better; Pinkman's relationship with the girl next door had a tough turn, but seems like things were fixed by the end). They haven't tipped their hand towards any resolutions and best of all, the opener continued to give us something big to look forward to. You love it for giving you just enough, but teasing you to want more.

Addendum: great musical selection by this show so far. Last night was a TV on the Radio song and earlier in the season there was a Walkmen song. Gotta love it when they pick good music for good scenes.